Restraint

\Re’straint\ n 3 : control over feelings



1 : In my sleep I dreamed I was walking with my grandmother. She was healthy and youthful and she had the brightest smile on her face. We were walking on the sidewalk ready to step down unto the subway or what seemed like the entrance to a train stop. She was tired and ready to go home. I carried her in my arms like a child. That was the time I woke up.


1a : I feel asleep again and found myself in a swimming pool that had no water. I was still lying down under my blankets. The blanket was dry but it was dewy. After all, I was lying down in a swimming pool. There was something I felt, moving about in my hair so I instinctively brush it with my hand in a sweeping motion. A little orange fish fell into my blanket. It was dead but its eyes were glowering, looking at me. All of a sudden I noticed that my whole blanket was covered with other fish. They were all dead but they were all staring intently at me. I tried to wave my blanket to throw them off but they were attached to it. My comfort zone pre-occupied with subconscious thoughts that never seem to want to go away.


2 : He reached for the emptying cup, observing what had remained half past the morning hour. The sunlight had slowly crept in, like the warmth of hibernation becoming more apparent under the blankets and in between the rumpled pillows. He had put a teaspoon too many of sugar into his drink, which made him decidedly restrained after every sip from the ceramic rim. The light would refract through the translucent window glass and illuminate his thoughts the way it did the crystal chandelier. There was no one around, no soft music playing in the background, no gentle nudging or affectionate embrace from where he sat comfortably. He thought of preparing breakfast – eggs over easy, 2 pieces of warm toast with a thin coat of honey, and perhaps a cigarette right after if he felt like it – but he didn’t feel like preparing. It was a calmly reunion he wanted to share with himself, a detachment from all the other mornings that had run on unremittingly like the seasons. He had no sudden urge to leave or any unimparted words of affection that knew such tolerance. Everything was quite like what they were the night before. He was still the same person after all.